


The Biological Imperative

by RocknVaughn



Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Season/Series 01, Suspense
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 03:02:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4590579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RocknVaughn/pseuds/RocknVaughn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the departure of the Elster family, Laura ponders about life, loyalty, family...and if those qualities have anything to do with the disappearance of Mattie's other flash drive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I know, another WIP. But this idea would not leave me alone until I wrote it... *hides*

~010101010~

 

It had been less than a week since Mia, Leo, Max, and Niska had walked out of their lives, but to Laura, it already felt like a lifetime. Strange how some people (or in this case, Synths) could make such a large impression in one’s life in such a small amount of time, but Laura couldn’t deny that she had been forever changed by the Elster family.

Now that she’d seen their truest potential, no longer did she see Synths as a nuisance; as a burden on society. Rather, she felt that they were on the verge of a strange, new world; one where Synth and Human would stand side by side, helping one another.

 Or at least, they _could_ , if someday Mia and the others chose to procreate.

For about the 20th time since they’d gotten home, Laura stood up and went to her cupboard, reaching underneath the jumpers on the top shelf of the wardrobe to retrieve Mattie’s flash drive. She held it in her hands, turning it over and over in her palms, pondering.

 _With great power comes great responsibility_ , Laura thought to herself before snorting at the idea that such a deep truth had come from the lips of a fictional character in a superhero film.

The Elsters had entrusted her with the keeping of their most precious secret. She felt just as awed by the honour now as she had when Niska had held the drive out to her and each other Elster had, in turn, agreed to leave it with her.

But yet, Laura’s mind was troubled; less by the onus of responsibility, and more by the niggling doubt that she’d been unable to shake since yesterday.  

~010101010~

 

_“Tob, have you been in my bag? Can’t find my other flash drive.”_

_“Yeah, I’m the FBI’s most wanted flash drive thief…”_

_“Bollocks, it’s gone.”_

~010101010~

 

Laura couldn’t help it, but her keen lawyer’s mind wouldn’t let her forget that something just didn’t add up.

It felt wrong to think it, but Laura’s mind kept going back to that day in the Crypt of St. Mary Magdelaine: to Niska’s hard, almost fierce expression as she’d held out the flash drive to her. Niska had been the one who had spoken most vehemently for their right to procreate whilst at their house, but she was the first one that day to speak of exercising caution, of not acting in haste.

Yet, was that not exactly what Niska had done just days before when she’d attacked the punters at the underground smash club? Or when she’d crushed the pervert’s throat at that brothel?

 And now, with the disappearance of Mattie’s other flash drive, Laura couldn’t help but wonder if the two were interconnected.

Their collective attention had been captured by Karen’s departure. When they’d turned around, Niska was just unplugging the silver flash drive that Laura now held in her hands. When it came down to it, all they had for proof that the drive actually housed David Elster’s Synth consciousness creation program was Niska’s word.

The timing of her exit from the other Elsters’ lives would have been incredibly convenient if she had an ulterior motive, yet her goodbyes had seemed particularly heartfelt.

Laura believed that Niska, who seemed to hold a great distrust of humans in general, would have had no qualms with deceiving _her_. But could the same really be said of her own family?

Niska appeared to have a fiercely loyal connection to Leo and her Synthetic brothers and sister. She didn’t even hesitate to offer up her own fluid in order to save Max after he’d fallen in the river.  It had been Leo that had reminded her that she couldn’t do so without significant risk to herself, thus proving that Niska hadn’t even considered the consequences of her actions.

And Niska had known about Karen, the Synth that was a doppleganger of Leo’s human mother. She had known that Karen was not on their side, was not to be trusted, yet hadn’t told Leo about it. Perhaps it had been meant as an act of kindness to keep Leo in the dark about Karen’s existence, but no one could deny that the lack of that key information had left the poor young man woefully unprepared for facing the vision of his long-dead mother again. Especially when the last time he’d seen that face was when she’d purposely drowned him in an attempted murder/suicide.

Yet, impulsivity and ill-thought out plans were not the same as a conscious misdirection meant to deceive the ones she loved for her own gain.

Would Niska actually betray _their_ trust?

Laura didn’t know the answer to that question, but believed she held it in the palms of her hands.

~

Later that night, Laura was propped up against the headboard of her bed, working on papers for the office.

Since begging to be allowed to come home, Joe had been as good as his word. He’d spent his nights on the couch with nary a complaint and had not even hinted at if or when he’d be allowed back in her bed; which was good, since Laura had no idea what her answer would have been if he'd asked.

However, Laura’s mind was not focused on the briefings in front of her, but rather on the flash drive still hidden in her cupboard.

As she heard soft footfalls on the stairs, she made a decision. “Mattie?” she called out, just loud enough for someone in the hallway to hear, but not loud enough to wake the sleeping Sophie.

The hinges creaked a little as Mattie’s face appeared in the space between the door and the doorframe. “Yeah?”

“Got a minute?”

“Sure.” Mattie padded in and plopped down to sit cross-legged on the end of the bed. “What’s up?”

 _No,_ Laura thought, _I’m not going to burden her with this. It’s probably just my mind playing tricks on me._ She shook her head slightly and answered with a smile, “Never mind, Matts. It’s nothing.”

However, her very astute daughter was not fooled for a second. Mattie raised one skeptical eyebrow at Laura and insisted, “It’s something. And you promised; no more secrets. So, I’m not leaving until you tell me what it is.”

Laura haughtily stared her daughter down in an effort to get her to back down, but knew that it would ultimately be futile. If anyone in this family could out-stubborn Laura, it was Mattie. Finally, she sighed in defeat and waved her hand vaguely at the open bedroom door. “Could you...bring your laptop in here, please?”

Mattie looked at her, question in her eyes. “What do you want that for?”

“You’ll see.”

~010101010~

 

Moments later, Mattie reappeared, carrying her laptop.

“Can you shut the door behind you?” Laura asked, and Mattie complied, leaning back and closing it with the weight of her body.

“Now, what’s this all about?” Mattie asked, placing her laptop on the bed and then climbing on to sit next to her mother.

“Have you found your other flash drive, yet?”

Mattie gave Laura a strange look. “Not yet. What does that have to do with anything?”

“Maybe nothing. That’s what I want to find out.” Laura climbed out from under the covers and walked into the wardrobe to retrieve the flash drive she'd hidden there.

Mattie’s eyes nearly popped out of her head when she saw what her mother was carrying. “Seriously?” she exclaimed, giving Laura a look of incredulity. She leant over and tapped a button on her father’s clock radio and suddenly the room was filled with the strains of a Beethoven concerto.

 “The single-most important piece of Synth technology in the world, and you’ve been hiding it under your jumpers in your cupboard!?” Mattie hissed at mother quietly.

“What? What’s wrong with that?” Laura asked defensively. “And what’s with the cloak-and-dagger routine?” She nodded toward the radio.

“You don’t honestly think that Hobb guy is done with us, do you? After we outsmarted him and helped Leo and the others get away? We’re the only link to the Elsters he's got left. By now, he’ll have tapped our phone lines, have them monitoring our internet, and perhaps have even bugged the house, just hoping that we might still be able to lead him to them!”

Oh. _Oh!_ Laura hadn’t thought of that, actually, though now that Mattie mentioned it, it made perfect sense.

“And you go and hide that thing in your wardrobe? Christ, Mum, you might as well have taped a sign to it saying, ‘Please steal me!’ I was right before. You’re completely _pants_ at this spy stuff.”

“Hey!” Laura said as she sat down on the bed next to her daughter. “Not completely. Our plan _did_ work, don’t forget.”

“All right, I’ll grant you that. But you are no longer allowed to be the one to hide stuff around here! I mean,  _Sophie_ could have found a better place, honestly!”

Ruefully, Laura agreed. “She likely would have hid it at the bottom of her toy box under all of Arabella’s clothes. I doubt anyone would be brave enough to search there.”

Both Laura and Mattie giggled at that.

Mattie sobered first. “So, really. What’s this all about, Mum?”

“You were the one sitting in front of the laptop when David Elster’s program was running. You got a chance to see the code, yes?”

Mattie shrugged. “Well, yeah, course I saw it. Leo put me in charge of capturing the data stream and monitoring its progress.”

“So you’d know it if you saw it again?”

Mattie nodded. “Not something I’m likely to forget.”

Laura nodded once. “Good,” she said, and proffered the flash drive to Mattie. “I want you to check and make sure it’s on this.”

Mattie took the drive from Laura’s outstretched hand but looked confused. “But…we already know it’s on it.”

Laura gave Mattie a pointed look. “Do we? Do we really?”

Mattie’s eyes widened as she realized what Laura was insinuating. She plugged the drive into her laptop and did a search of the file directory. Her eyes zigzagged back and forth as she scanned down the page before she visibly paled and said, “Oh, shit… It’s…it’s not here!”

Laura’s eyes met her daughter’s over the glowing screen of the laptop, her face a horrified mirror of Mattie’s.

Before she could even say it, Mattie spoke what Laura was thinking.

“Niska.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Holy buggering fuck!” Mattie cursed, her eyes flashing with indignant anger as she slapped her laptop closed. "That circuited bitch!"

“Language, Mattie,” Laura scolded, even though her thoughts were much the same.

Mattie rolled her eyes. “How could she do that to Leo, to all of them? They trusted her!”

“I know,” Laura commiserated. “We trusted her, too. We weren’t given any reason not to.”

Mattie got up to pace anxiously. “Bollocks! What are we gonna do?”

“Well, we’re going to have to find Mia, Leo, and Max and warn them. Do you have any idea how we can do that? Do you still have Leo’s mobile number?”

Mattie waved the thought aside like an annoying gnat. “No, no…he’ll have changed it by now. Wouldn’t want to take the chance that Hobb could trace it.”

“What about that website he found you at?”

Mattie stopped pacing and looked at her mum. “The Headcracker forum?”

Laura nodded.

Mattie bit her lip as she considered it. “Well, it’s a bit of a long shot. I dunno if he’d even bother checking that account again for messages or if he’d even believe it was me if he did. In fact, Leo seemed pretty keen about breaking all ties with us, probably for our own safety. Leo’s like that. But I can give it a try.”

“Well, we’ve got nothing to lose,” Laura said. “Just be careful! I don’t want Hobb to find out what you’re doing.”

“Don’t worry, Mum; it’ll be fine. I can do that sort of stuff in my sleep. “

“Good.”

Mattie nodded and collected her laptop from the bed. She was almost to the door when Laura said, “Mattie?”

She turned in place to look at Laura. “Yeah?”

“Don’t say anything to Tob or your dad just yet, okay? I don’t want to worry them.”

“I won’t.”

~010101010~

 

Mattie shut her bedroom door and climbed onto her bed, pausing only long enough to plug the computer in to its power source. Her finger hovered over the track pad, about to open up the link to Headcracker, but then her eyes fell upon the flash drive that was still attached to her USB port and thought better of it.

 _First things first,_ she thought, praying that Niska Elster hadn’t had time to perform a full erase during her bait-and-switch routine.

It was frightening enough to wonder what Niska might be planning to do with the consciousness program, but the thought that Leo and the others would not have access to what was, after all, their legacy, too… That was unthinkable to Mattie. Leo had already been through so much pain and betrayal in his life that Mattie absolutely _refused_ to fail him now when he needed her most.

After hours of meticulously combing through gigabytes of raw data on her computer, Mattie finally found what she was looking for. She disconnected her computer from the internet as a precaution and then copied and pasted the data into a command window and hit the enter key.

Instantly the six rotating boxes twirled as they enlarged and then morphed into seemingly unending lines of code, the Tree of Life pulsing within it like a beacon. As the program completed and the tree symbol blinked out of existence, Mattie closed her eyes against the hot tears of relief that clung to her eyelashes.

The last time this program had run, it had brought Max back to life and Leo had nearly tackled his brother in his haste to hug him. Mattie had never seen Leo so happy. The precious moment of unbridled joy that overflowed into deep, burbling laughter had been glorious to behold. It had made Mattie wonder when the last time he’d laughed like that had been.

Mattie copied the program onto the flash drive, and then double and triple checked that it was complete and in full working order before performing a purge of all the data on her laptop. She wasn’t going to take any chances that Professor Hobb might be able to get his hands on Elster’s program. She still didn’t know what that bastard wanted to do with it, but Mattie had no doubt that whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

Once the data removal was complete, Mattie disconnected the flash drive and set it aside. Then she reconnected to the internet, rerouted her signal through the multitude of servers she used, and opened the Headcracker site.

Mattie knew that the news about Niska stealing the program would be very unwelcome to Leo, but at least now she could say that she’d saved his copy of his father’s code from oblivion.

She just hoped that she could get a hold of Leo before it was too late.

~010101010~

 

As she stood on the platform at King’s Cross station, Niska Elster watched as people swarmed around her like ants. It consistently amazed her how oblivious they could be. All it had taken to hide in plain sight was a box of auburn hair dye and a new set of coloured contacts; hazel this time, to better match her new look. Well, that and some new, more professional-looking clothing and a sweeping updo. Now she blended in perfectly with the crowds of people escaping London after a long day at work.

Suddenly, her weekender bag was nudged from behind and the strap slid down her arm. She caught its descent before the case could touch the ground and then turned her head to glare at the perpetrator. “Do you mind?” she said frostily and then watched as the young man’s cheeks reddened in embarrassment.

“I…I’m sorry, miss,” he said, ducking his head before doubling his pace and heading further down the platform.

Niska stared after him in shock, her mind spinning, trying to place the face…

~

_“Why care so much for something that cannot care for you?”_

_“It’s a reflection,” George had replied, as patient with her blunt attitude as ever. “When I look at Odi, I don’t see a Synthetic. I see…all the years of care he gave us; all the memories that he carried for me when I couldn’t. He can’t love me, but… I see all those years of love looking back at me.”_

~

Of course, the young man who was now hidden by the crowd was not George’s beloved Synth, but he'd reminded Niska so much of Odi that she felt the loss like a physical pain.

 _George…_ She thought as she tucked her hand inside the pocket of her coat to pet the flash drive she’d sewn into the lining.

“The 5:45 train to Brighton is now boarding on Track 8,” the pleasant voice of a Synth intoned over the station’s loudspeaker.

NIska stared at the sign above her head that blinked “Now Boarding” in a monotonous rhythm, like a heartbeat. Like _George’s_ heartbeat.

~

_She could feel his body grow ever weaker under her hand as she tried in vain to staunch the blood pouring from his wound._

_“You can’t die because of me…” she lamented._

_It was clear that George’s breathing was laboured even as he replied with his unique brand of thought-provoking honesty. “I don’t think it’s up to you,_ _he’d gasped, mirroring what he’d once said to her about getting to choose who lived and who died._

_“You…need to go,” he reminded her. “The police will be coming.”_

_Even now, as his life’s blood drained from him, George was still looking out for her. “I’ll do everything in my power to help you,” he’d said, and he had meant it._

_Niska leaned forward, touching her forehead to the good doctor’s in a sign of love and affection that he would never understand. And then she'd left him alone to die._

~

 _No,_ she thought as she dropped her ticket to the ground and pivoted on her heel _. I can’t leave London just yet. I‘ve got a debt to repay first._

 


End file.
